seeds

While our house is many splendid things (in my humble estimation), one thing it is decidedly not is bright. As in, it’s really, really dark inside. Our house faces north, and this architectural placement comes in really handy in the summer. The rest of the time, though, this means it stays pretty continually dark inside, making our space not very ideal when it comes to starting seeds indoors (or taking interior photos, to put it lightly).

I’ve fought against this for years, tempting fate and trying to start seeds inside anyways. To say my attempts have been met with limited success would be an understatement, at best. Sure, some seeds did well despite the limited light and kind of jerry-rigged set-up, but most, well, they gave it their best shot (cue Scotty from Star Trek: “I’m giving ‘er all she’s got, Captain!”)

This year, though, I was determined to do things right. Noticing the exposed beams in the upstairs bathroom with fresh, seed-starting eyes this past winter, I realized they’d make a great spot for hanging lights. That bathroom is also, admittedly, the brightest spot in the house during the day. The sunlight it already garners, coupled with supplemental light made that room the best candidate for setting up a seed-starting operation. Fate intervened, and cut me some slack. At last!

Glenn created a table from cut up 2×2′s, topped with two 2×4 sheets of plywood for putting the starting trays on (a 4×4 sheet would’ve worked, too, but it wouldn’t have fit in our car). The bottom frame is essentially a cube, to keep it light, making it easier to disassemble when the time comes to take it down for the season. He put furniture sliders on the bottom to easily slide the table around, if need be (you could also achieve the same results with casters).

The lights are basic shop lights, hung from bronze chain. I’ll adjust the height on them up as the plants grow. I topped off several of the plant trays with plastic tops, to trap and retain moisture, in order to encourage germination.

So far, so good! There’s a good deal of green bits and bobs poking their lovely heads up from the soil. This year, I opted to go with a full garden of Sow True Seed offerings. That owes partly to their generous gift of 25 seed packets of my choosing, and largely to my having been a fan of their open-pollinated, non-GMO, heirloom selection ever since they opened for business several years ago. Also, they’re a local company and I’m a big fan of supporting local businesses.

My garden plans this year are super ambitious. I’ve whittled down some things I used to grow (turns out we don’t really eat that much eggplant after all) and upped others, like lettuce and tomatoes. I’m exited to see how it all turns out, and I’ll keep you posted over the growing season, including detailed listings of each variety of veggie I’m growing.

What about you? How does your garden grow? Let the growing frenzy commence, peeps!